Press
Mother Jones
A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge.
By Josh Neufeld. Pantheon.
September/October 2009
Among
the many Katrina-themed books that have emerged in the four years since the
hurricane, this character-driven graphic novel stands out for its personal
touch. Neufeld weaves together the stories of a diverse bunch of real-life
New Orleanians: A convenience store owner spends a bug-infested night on the
roof of his flooded market, an African American family endures chaos at the
convention center, a doctor keeps the horror at arm's length from his French
Quarter digs, and an artsy young couple flee to Houston and come back to find
they've lost everything, including a treasured comic book collection. A.D.
avoids politics; it's real power is in its images of waterlogged cityscapes
and its characters' expressively rendered faces, streaming with sweat and
contorted in anguish. In Crumb-like detail, Neufeld convincingly recreates
his protagonists' ordeals — and their halting recovery. As one tells
the cartoonist. "We're not all home yet." — Kiera
Butler